Categories

A “Background Check” vs. a Thorough Background Check

A North Carolina woman called a few weeks ago. She had paid a local investigator $2,500 to do some surveillance on her ex-husband’s new live-in friend. She had also asked the investigator to conduct a background check on the friend to see if he had any criminal history. After meeting the friend on several occasions, she was concerned that he might have a criminal history. After a few days of surveillance, she was disappointed that it didn’t turn up much of anything.

I tried to explain that surveillance is hit or miss; it’s hard to blame an investigator for not finding the kind of information that the woman was hoping to find. Surveillance is almost always a crapshoot. You have to manage with the cards you’re dealt. The timing may not be right. The person may not be very active or doing the things that you think he or she may be doing. And there seems to be this vast disconnect between how difficult surveillance can really be and what the client expects to obtain from it (hint: it’s not like what you see on TV!).

But the woman was particularly vexed by the so-called background check performed by the investigator. The …read more